Is the Bible our sole final authority?

Published: 4 December 2010(GMT+10)

The Bible alone is our final authority because it alone is ‘God-breathed’
(2 Tim 3:16).

This week’s feedback from JA in the USA concerns the foundational Reformation
doctrine of Sola scriptura:

For some time I have been using various internet message boards and contacting various
ministries trying to get a better understanding of the doctrine of sola scriptura.
So far I have gotten nothing but confusion accompanies by large amounts of hostility
from people that say they are sola scriptura but who won’t make any effort
to explain or defend it. I would appreciate any input you could offer.

How can the Bible be someone’s final or sole authority in all matters when:

The Bible does not tell us what books it is supposed to have and what books it is
supposed to leave out (include the Gospel of Matthew and exclude the Gospel of Judas);

The Bible does not tell us what manuscripts we should use to prepare a translation
and what manuscripts we are supposed to reject (use Textus Receptus but not Codex
Sinaiticus);

The Bible does not expressly tell us who is right when two people have different
(and often mutually exclusive) ideas about what the Bible means?

BTW: I have a bachelor’s degree in biology, but I am a creationist. I place
no importance on the age of the earth as a matter of doctrine or as a matter of
science. Science cannot tell us how old the earth is, but science has documented
that the earth’s 24 hour solar day is not constant (Indian Ocean Earthquake)
and there is archaeological evidence and historical documentation to indicate that
the earth once had solar days of less than 24 hours and solar years of less than
the current 365.25 days. The most I will say as a matter of doctrine is that Satan
had not yet rebelled against God when God created Adam and Eve and no living thing
in creation died before Adam and Eve sinned against God.

1. The Bible does not itself have a list of books which are said to be part of Scripture,
but I would argue that this isn’t necessary. The books of Scripture have always
been recognized by Christians (and by Jews, for the books which are part of the
Protestant canon of the Old Testament) to have special binding authority over matters
of faith and practice. Protestant Christians accept the same Old Testament writings
which make up the Jewish Bible (of course, there are some differences of ordering
the books, but that hardly matters). For the New Testament, there are a few qualifications
for a document to be considered part of the canon.

First, it had to be written by a first-or second-generation Christian. That is,
someone who directly knew Christ, like John or Peter (Paul counts too, because of
his Damascus road experience) or by someone who was directly taught by someone who
knew Christ, like Mark, who wrote Peter’s account of Jesus’ ministry,
or Luke, who used first-generation Christians as his sources.

You see, the canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative
list of books. [Bruce Metzger]

Second, it has to be used as Scripture by the whole Church—something that
was only used in Alexandria but not Antioch or Rome, for instance, wouldn’t
qualify. This may seem circular—for something to be declared Scripture for
the whole Church it has to be used that way by the whole Church. But it’s
really not; it’s more of a formalization of what the Church had already recognized
long before the concept of a formal canon was thought of.

Third, any candidate for the canon cannot contradict any part of previously accepted
Scripture. For instance, a document which claimed that there was another way to
salvation besides through Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection would not
be considered for the canon.

If you read the apocryphal New Testament, you will notice substantial differences
in their teaching and writing quality. Some are obviously Gnostic in character,
and the apocryphal Acts of various apostles and biblical characters frequently cast
the starring apostle in a role as a sort of Christ-figure. Most of the apocryphal
books were never even meant to be considered for the canon; they were more like
romance or adventure novels; cheap entertainment like today’s Christian novels.

Finally, no book which is currently part of Scripture was ever rejected by the Church
at any point in history, and no document which is excluded was ever included by
the majority of the Church. There are very early documents (like the Muratorian
canon) which confirm this.

‘You have to understand that the canon was not the result of a series of contests
involving church politics. … You see, the canon is a list of authoritative
books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These documents didn’t
derive their authority from being selected; each one was authoritative before anyone
gathered them together.’1

The Bible was written to be plain to its contemporary readers (this is called the
doctrine of perspicuity), so at the time of writing, there was no need for a commentary
on what the Bible meant on a certain point.

Earlier, The NT scholar Frederick Fyvie Bruce (1910–1990), who even wrote
a book on the Canon, pointed out:

‘The NT books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were
formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them
in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognising
their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. …
[Church] councils [did] not impose something new upon the Christian communities
but codif[ied] what was already the general practice of those communities.’2

2. First, the Bible’s originals preceded the manuscripts we now have by over
a century for even the earliest ones, and the major ones are 3–4 centuries
after the originals. Second, they didn’t get their names (like Sinaiticus,
Alexandrinus, etc) until their modern discoveries. Third, we don’t believe
that any of the manuscripts we now possess are inerrant; they all have
copyists’ errors; the New Testament has quite a bit more than the Hebrew Old
Testament because while the OT was copied by professional scribes, the NT was copied
by amateurs; if someone wanted his own copy of Romans, he had to write it out himself
or hire someone to do it for him.

The copies of the NT documents we have all have errors, but we have so many
copies from so many different places, and which go back fairly early, that we can
tell fairly certainly what the original text said. Although there are disagreements
among scholars on various points, no single manuscript error affects a point of
Christian doctrine or practice.

3. The Bible was written to be plain to its contemporary readers (this is called
the doctrine of perspicuity), so at the time of writing, there was no need for a
commentary on what the Bible meant on a certain point. The need for an explanation
comes when the cultural information assumed by the text is lost. So it would be
anachronistic, for example, for Paul to write that when he says “baptize”,
he means “to immerse believers in a body of water” (to reflect one view
of the practice), because the meaning of “baptize” would be known to
his audience.

As for the age of the earth, even if I accept for the sake of argument that the
length of days and years was not always constant, it stretches credulity to allow
that the difference could stretch the biblical age of the earth (around 6,000 years)
to billions. In my view, the archaeological evidence is more likely to show that
earlier civilizations had less precise calendars than we do today, rather than the
length of days and years actually changed.

As you say, no living thing died before the Fall. This is enough to rule out millions
of years, because any scheme that adds vast eons to Earth history places most of
the fossil record before man, and this is a record of death.